News : Iranian opposition

INU- The fate of the Iranian Shah was sealed at a Western summit forty years ago, and now a new international summit, scheduled to be held in Poland next month, may well seal the fate of the mullahs.

On 6 January 1979, Germany, Britain, the United States and France decided to abandon their appeasement of the Shah, as was the wish of the Iranian people protesting on the streets, and pave the way for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

But this was not the free democracy that the Iranian people had demanded. Instead, over the course of just two years, fundamentalism rained down on the country, leading to the execution of tens of thousands, the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands, and the suppression of every Iranian. The West stayed largely silent and, as such, began appeasing the mullahs just as they had the Shah.

Since then, things have only gotten worse and Iran can now be found pulling the string in numerous countries, conflicts, and terrorist groups across the Middle East and the world. But despite numerous protests by the Iranian people against the religious dictatorship and for regime change, the West has ignored them and the Regime has been emboldened in their crackdown.

There was something different about the latest round of protests, which began in December 2017 and is still ongoing, and that was a change in US policy, where the White House called on Iran to allow the protesters to continue unharmed. Of course, the Regime did not heed the warning and instead launched a violent crackdown that left 50 dead and 8,000 in prison.This time, the US reacted by pulling out of the nuclear deal and reimposing sanctions on Iran, showing the mullahs that their actions have consequences.

The Regime, clearly angered by this show of support for the Iranian people, lashed out at those who helped organise the protests and advocated for the US’s new policy: the Iranian Resistance.

Over the course of 2018, the Regime plotted major attacks on the Resistance in Europe and the US; all of which were thankfully thwarted. They tried to bomb the People’s Mojahedin of Iran’s (PMOI/MEK) headquarters in Tirana, Albania, where 2,500 refugees from Iran live, as well as the gathering of the National Council of Iranian Resistance (NCRI), in Paris, France, where over 100,000 were present. The Regime also spied on the MEK in the US and plotted an assassination in Denmark.

In 2019, the Netherlands revealed that Iran is behind two murders of Iranian dissidents in 2015 and 2017. Finally, the European Union imposed sanctions on Iran and placed the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) on its blacklist. But this does not go far enough. Europe must, as the US does, hear the voices of the Iranian people.

Elaheh Arj from the Women’s Committee of the NCRI, wrote: “It is [the] Iranians and their resistance who intend to give voice to their legitimate demands for regime change and for the recognition of the democratic alternative, which has proven its competence. Their voices need to be heard.”

On February 8, Iranians and their supporters in Paris will hold a demonstration against the mullahs’ terrorism, human rights violations, and demand recognition of their rights to live in freedom.